Michael Spencer

Michael Spencer (November 9, 1919 – April 22, 2016) was a Canadian film producer, most noted for his tenure as the first executive director of the Canadian Film Development Corporation.

Born in London, England, in 1919, Spencer came to Canada in 1939 to visit relatives in British Columbia; Initially a cameraman, he later became a director and producer of NFB documentaries; by the 1960s, he was a key planning executive with the organization.

In 1966, the NFB asked him to establish a new system for funding Canadian feature films; his proposals led to the establishment of the CFDC, now known as Telefilm Canada, and Spencer was named the first director of the organization. He also unsuccessfully advocated for Canadian film to be funded in part by a surtax on box office sales in Canadian movie theatres, and for Canadian content quotas requiring a certain number of theatre screens to be devoted to showing Canadian films.

In 1992 he was the recipient of a special Genie Award for outstanding contributions to the Canadian film industry at the 13th Genie Awards; he used his speech to criticize the government for doing too little to ensure that Canadian films could actually get widespread distribution in theatres. In 2004, the Canadian Society of Cinematographers named him as the recipient of its Bill Hilson Award for lifetime achievement in Canadian cinema.

Filmography